Trash Culture - Standards and Definitions of Low Culture

Standards and Definitions of Low Culture

In his book Popular Culture and High Culture, Herbert J. Gans gives a definition of how to identify and create low culture:

Aesthetic standards of low culture stress substance, form and being totally subservient; there is no explicit concern with abstract ideas or even with fictional forms of contemporary social problems and issues. ... Low culture emphasizes morality but limits itself to familial and individual problems and values, which apply to such problems. Low culture is content to depict traditional working class values winning out over the temptation to give into conflicting impulses and behavior patterns. —Herbert Gans,

When applying that lens to mass media, it often includes shows that don’t go too deeply into abstract ideas, or that don’t address head-on contemporary social problems.

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